(1) Field of the Invention
The invention pertains generally to property management systems and guest service devices serving hospitality establishments such as hotels and resorts. More particularly, the invention relates to interfacing property management systems with guest service devices.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Hospitality establishments such as hotels and resorts commonly use a computerized property management system (PMS) to manage guest bookings, online reservations, point-of-sale terminals, telephone, and other amenities. For example, front desk staff may be provided with a computer terminal connected to the PMS allowing staff members to view room status and check-in guests to vacant rooms. Automatic interaction with the PMS by guest service devices is also useful. In one example, when a guest makes a long distance phone call using an in-room telephone, the hotel's telephone system automatically posts a charge to the guest's room by sending a room charge message to the hotel's PMS. The telephone charge is thereby automatically added to the guest's folio.
A PMS is typically a standalone device having a limited number of communication interfaces to help secure sensitive data stored therein. The communication interfaces allow external guest service devices to access information stored within the PMS by sending and receiving messages to and from the PMS via a communication interface. The PMS may also send notification messages to guest service devices via the communication interfaces. A serial port is often included as one of the interfaces to allow interconnection to a guest service device such as a controller of the above-described telephone system. A plurality of serial ports for connecting to multiple guest service devices may be included, for example, allowing simultaneous connections to a telephone system controller, an electronic door access controller, a minibar door access controller, a video-on-demand (VOD) controller, a high speed internet access (HSIA) controller, etc. One or more network ports may also be included as communication interfaces in order to allow the PMS to communicate with any number of external guest service devices via a computer network.
Different PMSs and different guest service devices often utilize incompatible proprietary formats when sending and receiving messages via their respective communication interfaces. For example, a first PMS from a first vendor may require a post-room-charge message sent by a guest service device to be in a certain format, while a second PMS from a second vendor may require the same message to be in another format. Likewise, a first guest service device may expect to receive a message containing room information from the PMS in a particular format, while another guest service device from a different vendor may expect to receive the same information from the PMS in a different message format. Different message formats may involve different message sizes, data fields, authentications, encoding techniques, compression, message segmentation, acknowledgements, checksums, and failure notification requirements, for example.
Due to the substantial numbers of vendors providing PMS and guest service systems in the hospitality industry and no accepted standard messaging format, communication incompatibilities between different vendor components is a common problem. These incompatibilities increase the costs related to component integration. For example, guest service system vendors often need to custom modify their systems to support a specific message format in use by a PMS currently installed at a customer's hotel. Significant costs are incurred each time a guest service system vendor has to make modifications to support a new PMS message format. The reverse problem of a PMS vendor having to modify their PMS product to support of any of hundreds of different proprietary guest service system message formats is equally costly.
Hospitality establishments themselves also suffer from the above-described message format incompatibilities. For example, after a hotel installs a particular guest service system such as VOD, if the hotel decides to change to a new type of PMS requiring messages in a different format, a controller of the already-installed VOD system may need to be modified to support the new PMS messaging format. Furthermore, when a hotel has many different guest service systems installed from different vendors, the hotel may be required to pay fees to each guest service system vendor to support the new PMS messaging format.
One attempt to solve these message format incompatibility problems is the Lodging Link® product suite offered by Comtrol®. Comtrol's solution requires PMS vendors to implement Control's proprietary and exclusive universal hospitality language layer (UHLL) to thereby enable the PMS to communicate with hundreds of different vendors' guest service devices via the Lodging Link product.
However, in order to benefit from the Lodging Link product, a PMS vendor must still expend effort and cost ensuring their PMS is properly UHLL-compliant. Additionally, from a hotel's point of view, vendor choice is limited because not all PMSs are UHLL-compliant and not all guest service systems are supported by the Lodging Link product suite. Furthermore, once a hotel invests in a UHLL-compliant PMS and guest service systems supported by the Lodging Link product, it may be very costly for the hotel to switch to a non-UHLL-compliant PMS or utilize an unsupported guest service system. For example, after switching to a non-UHLL-compliant PMS, the hotel may need to pay substantial vendor fees to have either the non-UHLL-compliant PMS or the already-installed guest service systems (or both) modified to support a new message format such as the UHLL.